


We Are Coming Home

by enigmaticagentscully



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, Abby Griffin and Marcus Kane - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Season 2 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 20:19:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticagentscully/pseuds/enigmaticagentscully
Summary: A little one-shot AU: what if Marcus stayed behind on the Ark at the end of season one instead of Jaha? Abby holds onto the radio and, in spite of their complicated history, they both try to find a way to say goodbye. Straight up angst.





	We Are Coming Home

“Marcus? Marcus, are you still there?”

Absurd though it is under the circumstances, Abby breathes a sigh of relief when she hears the reply come through the radio.

“...still here. Lost the signal for a moment. Did you say you found Raven Reyes?”

“Yes. At the dropship. Along with Bellamy Blake and a couple of other kids.” Abby wavers for a moment, wondering how much to say. What use is it burdening Marcus with the troubles of the ground now? He solves her hesitance for her by outright asking:

“Are they alright?”

It’s odd, to hear him ask that kind of question. There’s still a part of Abby that has long since convinced herself that Marcus Kane doesn’t give a damn about anyone who doesn’t follow his own strict adherence to the rules, to the law. Raven and Bellamy both fall into that category – all the kids do – but she knows now that he _does_ genuinely care about what happens to them nonetheless. He always has.

“Raven’s been...injured.” That’s as much as she can bear to say. “She’s alive, but it doesn’t look good.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Marcus, and to his credit he sounds like he really means it. There is a pause and then: “Any sign of Clarke?”

“No, she...she wasn’t with them.” Abby tried to keep her voice level, although the words hurt just to say aloud. “A lot of the kids are gone. Taken by the Grounders, we think.”

“What for?”

“We don’t know. Thelonius is sending out a team to try and make contact with them, see if we can negotiate a peace.”

“And you’re going with them.”

It isn’t really a question but Abby answers anyway. “Yes. If there’s a chance they have Clarke, or they know where she is...”

“Just be careful, Abby. You know the camp can’t afford to lose you.”

“Oh, when have you ever known me to do anything rash, Marcus?”

That gets a weak chuckle from the other end, breathy and crackly through the radio. She tries not to imagine him, sitting in the dark, in the cold empty shell of the Ark, utterly alone and with a smile on his face.

“Abby?”

“I’m here,” she says instantly. She can give him that, if nothing else.

“Clarke will be fine. She’s a survivor, like you. She’ll be okay. You’ll find her.”

“I know. I know we will.”

There is a long silence, long enough that Abby starts to grip the radio more tightly in her fist, her heart constricting, terrified to speak for fear of no answer.

Then:

“Tell me again what its like,” says Marcus.

Abby nods, even though she knows there’s no way of him seeing.

“It’s...cold,” she says haltingly. “In a way that goes right down into your lungs when you breathe. But the air smells of pine trees, even here, even inside. It smells...sweet.”

She isn’t good at this; is more used to talking practicalities, giving orders. This feels like when Jake told stories to Clarke when she was younger, effortlessly creating images of a world neither of them had ever seen with just his words. But Abby has never had that gift, and now she’s struggling even to describe something that is the most real and tangible and miraculous experience of her life.

“Everything feels new,” she says. “Fresher and newer somehow, but...but older too. When you walk through the forest, your—”

“When _you_ walk through the forest,” corrects Marcus quietly.

Abby pauses, thrown off by the distinction. But then, perhaps it’s too painful for Marcus to imagine himself here, as much as she can hardly stand to picture him where he actually is right now.

“When _I_ walk through the forest,” she continues, “my feet sink into the ground with every step. Everything here is...softer. And so _alive_ , there’s life everywhere. The plants seem to grow up through everything, and there’s...a spider. A little brown spider walking across the floor near me right now. And leaves keep getting stuck in my hair.”

Another quiet laugh from the radio. “I’d have liked to have seen that.”

The words strike her with such a powerful ache that Abby suddenly finds she can’t continue. Out of all the things she has told him about – the distant blue-shadowed mountains, the clear rippling surface of the lake, the endless sun-dappled forest – the one thing he considers most worth seeing is her looking ridiculous with leaves tangled in her hair. It is at once both so unlike the Marcus Kane she knows and somehow still so t _ypically_ irritating of him that she can hardly bear it.

“Abby? Are you still there?”

“Yes.” She is still here. She will _always_ be here. He is the one who will be...

She clenches the hand not holding the radio into a fist, nails digging into her palm. She can’t fall apart now. She doesn’t have the _right_ to fall apart, not being where she is, not when so many others have been lost to get her here. She doesn’t have the right to wish things were different. Hasn’t she got everything she wanted? Haven’t they saved their people? What is one man’s life compared to what they’ve already sacrificed?

She doesn’t have the right to feel so alone, so lost, with only the thin thread of the voice on the radio connecting her to the only home she has ever known.

“I’m sorry,” says Marcus quietly.

Abby fights to keep her voice steady. “For what?”

“ _Everything._ I...everything I said to you. What I did, what I _tried_ to do...”

“Marcus, don’t—” The words come out trembling and raw; suddenly she realises tears are sliding down her face, falling silently onto her shirt. “Please don’t think about that now. That doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters. Of all the people I should beg forgiveness from, you’re the only one who can still hear.”

“You have it,” says Abby instantly, unthinkingly. “I forgive you.”

There was a brief silence. “As easy as that?” says Marcus.

“Of course.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to argue about it for half an hour first?”

Abby tries to laugh but it comes out as more a choked sob.

“Maybe you’re right,” says Marcus, and his voice is so faint and crackly now she has to press the radio to her ear even to hear it. “I don’t think we have half an hour.”

“Marcus...” Abby whispers. It is the only word she can remember, the one word in the whole world. She closes her eyes and suddenly she can _see_ him, as clearly as if she were standing there beside him. The line of his jaw, the shadows under his eyes, the dark, unruly mess of his hair. The bandages that she wrapped around his hands not 24 hours ago. He will be looking out of the window, she knows, gazing down at the Earth below. She imagines, for a moment, that she could step forward and put her arm around the defeated slump of his shoulders, rest her head against him and let her tears fall on his shirt. For that moment – just a moment – she wants it more than anything. The familiar metal womb of the Ark around her. The vast, empty silence of the stars. The comforting pull of oblivion. For her fight to be _over_ , her sins absolved. To sit beside an old friend and drift off to sleep.

She opens her eyes and thinks: _Clarke. I might see Clarke tomorrow._

It is enough to pull her back, and she is herself again, sitting in a makeshift tent built half from wreckage, cradling a radio against her ear. She feels a sudden sickening dread that she has fallen asleep without realising and missed time passing, but after a second Marcus’ familiar voice sounds faintly in her ear.

“Abby?”

It’s cold, she thinks. In a lifetime of imagining the ground, she never thought it would be so cold.

“...yes?”

His voice, barely above a whisper now, is like a soft breath of warmth in her ear. Home.

 “I’m glad you’re here with me,” he says.


End file.
